Curfew Crusade

Restrictions A Tool For Police To Wield

`When The Lights Come On, Be Home, Bill.'

The President Recounts His Mother's Advice As He Cites Statistics To Show That Keeping Teens Home At Night Can Cut Crime. But Students Say Such Laws Often Target The Wrong Groups And Are Even `Fun To Break.'

If your children have a tendency to ramble at night, particularly in search of trouble, then a curfew from dusk to dawn will make them come home and behave, or at least protect them from the dangers of the street.

In another bid to gain control of the political high ground on the crime issue, President Clinton Thursday urged communities across the nation to turn to curfews as early as 8 p.m. as one way to attack the problem of juvenile crime.

Hundreds of towns and cities already have stiff curfew laws, and there is a vigorous debate under way over what they actually accomplish.

Chicago has had various curfews since 1915, with a mixed record. At the least, they are viewed as useful tools for police who need an edge in encouraging youngsters to go home at night.

But curfews routinely are violated almost everywhere and are not much of a deterrent to youths who already have fallen into serious criminal behavior like gang action or chronic drug abuse.

People who worry about civil liberties note that strictly enforced curfews also tend to penalize children who have no intention of causing trouble, but just happen to be out after dark.

As with almost everything that happens in a presidential campaign year, politics is at the root of the curfew call.

Clinton and Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole have been trading broadsides at media events for the past week over a string of social policy proposals, with the president responding Thursday to Dole's proposal a few days ago for a crime crackdown and more prisons.

In joining the curfew crusade, the president is likely to get a warm reception from worried parents all too familiar with late-night waiting and from troubled public officials in city halls all over the country, for his pre-summer bid to get kids off the streets at night.

"These are just like the old-fashioned rules we had in effect when we were kids," the president said in an address to the Women's International Convention of the Church of God in Christ in New Orleans. He said that when he was a child, his mother told him: "When the lights come on, be home, Bill."

But responding to commands from a caring, vigilant parent a few decades ago isn't the same as facing a cop on the streets of a modern America that seems beset by an erosion of respect for authority, whether it is parental authority or police authority.

The nation already is well into a vast experiment with curfews aimed at curbing unacceptable juvenile behaviors and crimes. According to the Justice Department, nearly three-fourths of cities with populations over 100,000 have set curfews during the past few years, mostly in response to rising juvenile crime statistics.

In his speech, Clinton cited the Justice Department report, which lists Chicago as one of seven cities that cut juvenile crime with curfews. The city and its suburbs are something of an epicenter in the nationwide curfew effort, although enforcement and effectiveness differ from place to place.

Chicago's curfew law requires children under 17 to be indoors between 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. during the week and 11:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. on weekends. Exceptions are made for minors who are working, going to an adult-supervised activity sponsored by school, church or civic organizations or if the minor is accompanied by a parent or an adult approved by a parent.

Violations of Chicago's curfew have declined slightly during the past three years, from 94,048 in 1993 to 83,063 in 1994 to 82,407 last year.

But the record of violations collected might not be the best measure of the value of the curfew. For the police officer on the beat, it is a good tool to use to encourage children to go home. Arresting them might not be as valuable as having a veiled threat that gets them out of harm's way.

The Justice Department said Chicago's Fourth Police District, using a program called Operation Timeout, cut burglaries committed by juveniles from 304 in 1993 to 269 in 1994, vehicle thefts from 255 to 177 and thefts from 522 to 177.

But Freddy Calixto, executive director of Chicago's BUILD (Broader Urban Involvement in Leadership Development) agency in West Town, says curfew laws have little relevance in the lives of the hard-core gang members who are at the center of public fears and perceptions of juvenile crime.

"The law doesn't matter," he said. "These kids are going to be on the street regardless. Their parents are at the point where they have no control. Once they are in a gang, they don't listen to their parents anymore."

Mattie Johnson, an Englewood resident and community activist, said curfew laws were ignored in her South Side neighborhood for years, but during the past year, police have been much more vigorous in enforcing them, and that seems to have worked.